Chlorosis - the ‘green sickness'

The literature of the nineteenth century often referred to chiorosis. Some examples, taken from French sources, are mentioned. The illness was only given its name at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the clinical picture of febris alba virginum had been known for a long time previously. The history of chiorosis is interesting because of the variety of explanations, including the psychological, it attracted before it came to be recognized as due to hypochromic anaemia or iron deficienc

The role of language in psychiatric treatment in the French Romantic Age: A note on Dr Laurent Cerise

At the beginning of the 19th century France had many experts on the ‘moral treatment of insanity'. Very few of them, however, applied their experience and theories to the role of language in the development of behaviour from childhood on, in the pathogenesis of mental disorders, and in psychotherapy. To Dr. Louis Cerise, one of the founders of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, belongs the great distinction of formulating a theory which tried to take account of the necessary contribution of language to individual development. In his book Des Fonctions et des Maladies Nerveuses (1842), he put forward a view of the relationship between the individual and society. His concept of ‘the goal of activity' still merits our attentio

A modern melancholia: Van Gogh's portrait of Dr Gachet

It would be unwise to hazard a diagnosis for those attacks of illness to which Van Gogh was subject and which he dreaded. Karl Jaspers (1922) believed it might be possible to speak of schizophrenia, but few people today would retain this diagnosis as there is no indication of it in either the paintings or in the copious writings. Psychomotor epilepsy has, more recently and with greater plausibility, been proposed while certain symptoms are suggestive of attacks of vertigo of labyrinthine origin. The outbursts of anger, the anxiety attacks contribute to a clinical picture indisputably exacerbated by absinthe abuse. And there were frequent periods of dysphoria and depression. But who would dare to pin any of the classical labels of melancholia on Van Gogh

A short history of bodily sensation

In one of his Cahiers, Paul Valéry has the note. Somatism (heresy of the end of time), Adoration, cult of the machine for living.† Have we come to the end of time? The heresy anticipated by Valéry has almost become the official religion. Everything is related to the body, as if it had just been rediscovered after being long forgotten; body image, body language, body consciousness, liberation of the body are the passwords. Historians, prey to the same infection, have begun inquiring into what previous cultures have done with the body, in way of tattooing, mutilation, celebration all the rituals related to the various bodily functions.2 Past writers from Rabelais to Flaubert are ransacked for evidence, and immediately it becomes apparent that we are far from being the first discoverers of bodily reality. That reality was the first knowledge to enter human understanding: ‘They knew that they were naked' (Genesis 3.7). From then on, it has impossible to ignore the bod

‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’ et le pacte social

I. Une page de l’Émile évoque les plaisirs d’un séjour à la campagne et d’un jour de fête avec un groupe d’amis. Je confronterai cette page avec les propositions dans lesquelles Rousseau fait tenir l’acte fondamental du contrat social. On découvrira des similitudes de vocabulaire, de syntaxe, de figures, et finalement de pensée. Et il faudra essayer d’en tirer les conséquences. Le déjeuner sur l’herbe est l’aboutissement de la série des images fictives qui s’éveillent à l’appel de l’hypothèse..

É possivel definir o Ensaio?

Tradução do artigo “Peut-on définir l'Essai?”, de Jean Starobinski. Neste texto que se tornou referência nos estudos sobre a ensaística, Jean Starobinski reflete sobre a história do gênero e sobre as características mais notáveis desta forma moderna e fugidia, tendo como ponto de partida algumas linhas de força presentes na obra de Montaigne